But what exactly did the American general mean by "special"? If he meant "special" as in ungainly,
thin-skinned, and prone to cooking their occupants alive,
then the World War II tanks we're going to talk about today absolutely fit that bill.
Britain fielded some fugly tanks during the war, but the A13 Covenanter wasn't among them.
A cruiser tank ordered into production in 1939, it had a relatively sleek design, with a low profile
and sloped armour, and bore a high-velocity 40mm "2-pounder" anti-tank gun. The tank could also get
some speed behind it, capable of reaching speeds of up to 48 kilometres or 30 miles per hour.
The Covenanter had one major shortfall, however: it couldn't cool its engine to save its own life.
To make matters worse, the pipes connecting the engine to the radiators—which
were quite inconveniently located at the front of the tank in earlier models—turned
the fighting compartment into an oven, and its coolants were prone to leaking.
This rendered the tank just a little unsuitable for combat in the terrain
in which the British had intended to deploy it: the deserts of North Africa.
While the Brits manufactured almost 1,800 of these death traps from 1940 to 1943,
the Covenanter never saw combat. It was only ever fired up for testing and training purposes,
and for use as a heater in winter.
As the war went on and tank technology improved, the Covenanter's riveted
30mm armour became obsolete, too, unable to withstand the might of German anti-tank guns.
Even if the German guns didn't penetrate the armour, however,
the tank's rivets could bust free and bounce all throughout the hull, chewing up everyone inside.
At the end of the day,
the only thing the Covenanter really excelled at was wasting time and money.
While the Covenanter just sucked, other tanks merely sucked in certain conditions.
One of such was tanks Japan's Type 95 Ha-Go light tank, which entered production back in 1933.
This three-man tank was designed with infantry support in mind, not so much tank-on-tank warfare,
and performed well in pre-World War II campaigns in China and Manchuria.
The Type 95 was also a tank to be reckoned with in the early years of the Second World War,
notably in the jungles of Malaya and Burma, where it was believed that the terrain
would render tanks useless. The Japanese proved this notion wrong, using the lightly armoured Type
95's speed to advance through Malaya and Burma quicker than the Allied defenders anticipated.
But the Type 95 was not perfect—far from it. It came with a slew of mechanical issues,
engine-failure among them. Additionally, only the commander could operate the turret,
meaning he had to command the crew, observe through the hatch, and load, aim, and fire
the tank's main gun, while another man drove the tank and another operated the machine gun.
To shed light on another questionable design flaw, a layer of asbestos padded
the interior of the tank, so if the crew weren't outright killed by an enemy shell,
they might have had asbestosis to look forward to after the war.
Things got worse for the Japanese tank when the Allies figured out
that they could punch holes in its armour with mere machine guns,
and also when they realised that the Type 95's 37mm gun could not, in turn,
punch through the armour of newer Allied tanks such as the American M5 Stuart and the M4 Sherman.
Still, the Type 95 Ha-Go saw action all throughout the war. The Japanese just
loved getting stomped by heavier, more advanced Allied tanks.
Speaking of heavier tanks, although certainly not effective ones, the Führer was 100% compensating
for something when he approved Porsche's designs for the Panzerkampfwagen VIII Maus in June 1942.
Weighting in at 200 tonnes, bearing 220mm-thick armour, and sporting a 128mm gun, the Maus was
designed to be impenetrable and capable of obliterating any target on the battlefield.
A Daimler-Benz aircraft engine was required to propel this dinosaur,
and still, it struggled to reach speeds of even 19 kilometres or 12 miles per hour.
The thing was too bloody heavy to cross bridges, as well, so Porsche fitted the tank with a snorkel
so it could crawl across the beds of rivers without drowning the engine and everyone inside.
Recalling a meeting where Hitler was shown a wooden model of the tank,
German General Heinz Guderian had the following to say about it: "[E]xcept for me, all of [those]
present found the 'Maus' magnificent. It was promising to be exactly that, a 'giant.'"
In the end, the Maus never graced a World War II battlefield,
and just two prototypes were completed.
Maus means mouse, by the way, so
at least the dudes who designed this thing had a sense of humour.
Perhaps the Italian L3/35 tankette would have been more suited to the name mouse.
The two-man L3/35, or Carro Veloce CV-35, weighed just three tonnes, boasted 14mm armour at its
thickest points, and brought two 8mm machine guns to bear as its main armament. These guns
weren't part of a turret configuration, however, meaning they couldn't rotate 360 degrees as you
might expect of most tanks. One thing the Italian tankette had going for it was its speed, though,
capable of reaching 42 kilometres or 26 miles per hour. But to be honest, this was still pretty
trash, with even the British Covenanter able to best this tiny tank in a race for pink slips.
The thing is, the L3/35 wasn't really designed with another world war in mind,
nor tank-on-tank action. Production began back in 1935, and the tankette served in the Second
Italo-Abyssinian War, the Spanish Civil War, and a few other pre-World War II conflicts.
Even in these conflicts, however, it was easy prey for massed infantry attacks.
During the Second World War, the Italians deployed more L3/35s than
any other armoured fighting vehicle. The tankettes saw action in Italy, France,
North Africa, and even in the USSR. In all of these theatres, they were outclassed by pretty
much every other tank, and Allied anti-tank rifles made Swiss cheese of them, too.
At the end of the day, the Italians had brought a BB gun to a firefight.
We'll forgive the Italians for the L3/35, but we're not sure if we can forgive the Kiwis
for the actual dumpster that was the Bob Semple tank.
Before World War II, New Zealand didn't have any tanks of its own design;
the New Zealand army wasn't mechanised. After the war kicked off, the Kiwis and Aussies were—and
it's fair enough—freaking out about a Japanese invasion. In anticipation
of this, and not wanting to rely solely on Britain, the Kiwis got a little creative.
Basically, what they'd do, if the Japanese were to invade,
was bolt a bunch of corrugated plates and guns to a tractor base and call it a bloody day.
Named after the tank's designer, who was also New Zealand's Minister of Works,
the first Bob Semple tank prototype was built upon a Caterpillar D8 crawler tractor and fitted
with six Bren guns. Unlike most other tanks, which go for sleek, low-to-the-ground designs,
the Bob Semple tank told physics where it could shove it, standing a boss 3.5 meters or 12
feet tall. Six to eight unfortunate souls manned this Frankenstein-esque abomination,
and one of the gunners had to lie on a mattress on top of the engine to man his Bren gun.
Prototypes of the Bob Semple tank—of which, none ever saw action, thank God—weighed in at
a ridiculous 20 to 25 tonnes, and the driver had to bring the tank to a complete stop
to change gears. The Bob Semple tank was rickety, slow, poorly armoured, and F-ugly, but Bob Semple,
the man, stood by his monster despite all the public ridicule he received.
He said, "I don't see anyone else coming up with any better ideas."
And you know what, king? You're right. Let the haters hate.
Now, of the five tanks we covered today—the Covenanter, the Type 95, the Maus, the L3/35,
and the Bob Semple—which would you like to ride into battle? Which of the five would win in a
free-for-all? Do you know anything about any of these war-beasts that we didn't cover in this
video? Do you want us to make a second part to this video? If so, which janky tanks would
you like us to cover in that? Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.
And while a giant it was, practical it was not.